


graphite

by pigeonsatdawn



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Artist Kieran White, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, How Do I Tag, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, Light Angst, My First AO3 Post, Not Beta Read, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, as canon compliant as it can get without knowing kieran's back story, but there you have it, definitely not fluff, graphite, i just realized now that this reads like an essay, poor bby kieran deserves better, sorry - Freeform, this is such a boring fic thanks if you're reading it anyway, yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsatdawn/pseuds/pigeonsatdawn
Summary: Thiswas his worst punishment yet, of that he was sure.(alternatively titled: the gods do what they do best)
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	graphite

**Author's Note:**

> _**playlist:**_  
>  \- [noir](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuiAPjoEw_w&list=TLPQMjgwODIwMjAJmZnoD-lw3Q&index=8) by sophism  
> \- [past and present](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1cXTj1je4&list=TLPQMjgwODIwMjAJmZnoD-lw3Q&index=10) by sophism

**This** was his worst punishment yet, of that he was sure.

He couldn’t tell exactly what he had done to earn such a punishment. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done anything wrong; in fact, if anything, he’d caused too much wrong lately, even by his standards of wrong, which weren’t low to begin with. As the notorious Purple Hyacinth, a single murder was the lowest of the sins Kieran White could commit, and he’d definitely done more than just that. He’d sacrificed whatever left of his humanity to avenge the one he’s lost, and he can do so much more, so he does. And whenever he finally seemed to be getting closer to his ultimate goal—the goal he sacrificed so much for—the gods decided to send trouble his way, and it always seemed to involve the officer he’d made a deal with that very unfortunate night.

She was both his blessing, and his curse. They shook hands, and bound themselves more tightly than either would know. They spend nights—nights he would otherwise spend alone, and he knew she would be overworking herself—together, working towards a common goal, but sharing so much more than just information for a suspect, so much more than intel on a mission. They shook on their blood, and with it came a transfer of trust.

It was both a blessing, and a curse. It had been quite a while since Kieran had the chance to trust anybody. Being an assassin, despite one part of a syndicate, goes along with the unwritten yet obvious rule: there is no one to trust. The only form of trust he has was to trust that the apostle managing him had everything managed, and that all that was left to do was his job. Even then, it hadn’t been an absolute guarantee. He’d only managed to survive this long without being murdered or captured was, in big part, thanks to his own determination to survive, him being meticulous in crime scenes and simply doing what he had to do. So as long as he does not blatantly try to go against the Phantom Scythe’s wishes, Kieran White was guaranteed safety.

But—somehow—he trusts Lauren Sinclair with more than just safety. They have each others’ backs, yet they both knew it was more than just physical injuries between them. They made a rule, the night they shook on the deal: no personal matters. And yet, simply being with her had brought out a more human side of him, a side that _cares._ They made excuses, saying they needed the other alive, but it was implicit that it was due to that bond formed that night on the bridge, that they kept each other alive; a bond shook under the need to work together on achieving the goal they’ve dreamed of for so long. And so, after a long time, finally Kieran White gets to care about another person as much, if not more, than about himself, and though she never mentioned it to him, he was sure Lauren Sinclair had grown to care about him too, even though neither were very good at expressing it. 

It lasted for a good while, until he had to start paying the price of his actions. For Lune’s ambitions, he paid with more murder; a price he knew would cost more than just his morality, rather the trust he’d formed and maintained with the officer. After he’d just finished paying that price, for his acts of displaying humanity (and, along with it, vulnerability), he’d released a monstrous version of himself as an instinctive act of reflex towards Lauren’s justified anger for his actions. From the start, it was all wrong on his part, and none on hers: he’d made the deal, he’d let down his guard, he’d been forced to upkeep his identity as the Purple Hyacinth and betray her trust in the process, and he still had the nerve to lash out on her. 

He wasn’t proud. Then again, he hadn’t been sane. He hadn’t been, for a while now. He thought a part of his humanity had regained when he started spending time with the officer, a living reminder that he was doing what he does for a goal, for his lost loved ones, not just because. It only made him realize that he’d just been burying the nasty side of him; it was always there, and will always be, since the moment he decided to sacrifice a part of his soul. Even though he knew the officer may not have fully been sane when she called him a monster, he realized this truth nonetheless, and realized that he’ll never be fully human, could never feel the things a normal human would do without facing dire consequences. The gods, after all, always seemed to be punishing him whenever he tried.

Except he wasn’t quite sure what act it was exactly that landed him as the archivist of the APD, the very same district Lauren Sinclair was working in. It wasn’t just a single punishment, but rather an entire array of them: not only was he forced to act like a normal, unproblematic human, he had to do this around Lauren Sinclair herself without giving away their pre-existing connection to each other, or worse yet, their identities as Lune, who were being hunted by both the APD and the Phantom Scythe. He also had to play his part as the replacement mole, leaking exclusive information which may risk the other police officers their jobs, but more potentially their lives in general. But of course, the worst of these was the fact that he had broken Lauren Sinclair’s trust, and hence he was forced to bear the punishment alone, with the lack of a confidant, a _partner_.

So now he was in the archives, his hand itching over the pencil in his pocket, wanting desperately to draw on the papers he had been sifting through the past hour or so. His “job” was a simple one, and yet too redundant—reading the files, archiving them in their proper folders, over and over again. Every now and then he’d read a file that was worth noting, and he took note of it in his notebook with a pen, because he was sure that if he’d gotten hold of his pencil he’d wander off into his usual habit of sketching whatever came to mind. More often than not, he’d caught himself with the image of a certain amber-eyed lady, whose eyes glinted like thunder, hair blazed like fire, with a pistol against his chest. Every time, he felt her pull the trigger. Every time, he blinked to make sure he was back in reality, and painfully alive. Every time, he realized he was alone.

He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to think of the officer while he was in the station. He couldn’t let his mind be so _vulnerable_ , like it was that night at the cave where he… laid his hands on her. _Laid_ was an understatement. He looked at his hand, balling it into a fist with his nails digging into the palm of his hand, forming crescent indents on it, the way he did whenever he thought of that night. He couldn’t allow himself to happen again. He had to stay vigilant, keep his guard up, so he wouldn’t make a mistake.

Raising his glasses up, he decided to take a coffee break, and headed for the break room. There was no one in it other than Officer Lukas Randall, who was making himself two mugs of steaming hot coffee, black, with no sugar or creamer. Kieran almost laughed at the sight in irony, because he felt as bitter as the black coffee in the officer’s hands. Lukas Randall gave him a not-so-subtle glare, clearly annoyed by his newfound presence.

Kieran flashed him a smile. “Looking as chirpy as always, Officer.”

“I’ll be chirpy when Sarge and the Lieutenant stop bickering,” Randall grumbled, and Kieran was surprised that he hadn’t insulted _him_ instead. This caused him to raise an eyebrow. 

“What are they bickering about, now?”

Lukas Randall merely walked past him, holding his two coffee mugs as he walked out the door without so much of a glance at Kieran. He took it as a sign to follow the officer, but not before making his own cup of coffee, and headed towards the office space. From outside he could already hear Kym Ladell’s high-pitched taunts and a disgruntled William Hawkes. 

“—paperwork’s not gonna do itself, Ladell!” argued the latter, a hand on his forehead, fingers massaging his temples, due to the constant stress the sergeant gives him.

“I’ll have you know, _Willame,_ that the paperwork’s already done itself!” Ladell shouted back, smacking her pile of paperwork. “I’m just waiting for the—”

Officer Randall smacked his mugs on his desk, a few drops of coffee splattering from the mugs. The other police officers turned to look at him, and subsequently, Kieran himself, standing on the doorway with his own cup of coffee. “There he is!” Ladell exclaimed, pointing cheerfully at him. “And he even brought coffee!” The sergeant walked over to him, hand in his coffee, and snatched it out of him. “Kieran, hey, won’t you say my reports are absolutely comprehensive and diligently written?”

His eyes unconsciously drifted to look for a certain redhead. When he found her, their eyes clashed for a split second before she jerked back to her own work, acting as if he wasn’t there at all, like he had no effect on her. While he knew it couldn’t be true—after all, he had hurt her—it pained him to see her act as if they were strangers. Sure, they weren’t close, the way she was with Hawkes and Ladell, but they did share something.

He had to remind himself that he had been the one to throw away that something, and that it was now a thing of the past.

He snapped back to the blue haired sergeant, eyes wide in expectation of a positive response. Candidly, Kieran agreed, “You seem to be putting great effort in your reports, Sergeant Ladell. It’s always a pleasure to read them.”

Kym Ladell beamed, and as she made her way back to her desk, Kieran noticed how Officer Randall’s face darkened. Kieran found himself aligned with Randall’s thoughts—how _did_ she stay bright in such a dire time? After all, there’s Lune out and about with intel on the APD’s resources and had managed to neutralize Phantom Scythe members, and those members had been killed by their most infamous assassin, the Purple Hyacinth. For a while, Kieran thought of how nice it must be to live such a bright life, untouched by the monstrous side of the world they lived in. 

But when he smiled politely at the Sergeant, he thought: what if it was all a facade? A way to ignore her own problems, the way he did by immersing himself in pursuit of the leader and in his life as an assassin? Or like Lauren Sinclair herself, who refused talking about her personal matters, instead opting on overworking herself to the point of exhaustion? It hadn’t been too long since Harvey Wood, their coworker in the 11th precinct, and the mole Kieran was appointed to replace, was brutally murdered with the use of the golden viper venom—courtesy of his “old friend”, a fellow Phantom Scythe assassin, Belladonna Davenport. It would’ve been especially hard on the precinct, not to mention the fact that none of them (with the exception of Lauren Sinclair) knew of his agenda in the precinct, but here they were: other than the occasional bouts of tiredness, they still maintained a strong facade in front of their coworkers, the way he did with his new role as an archivist. It felt like a futile act, like they were trying too hard to convince each other that the world was, in fact, not dying, as they faced the dying world head-on, weapon in hand, backs exposed to whatever monsters pry in the night.

Apparently the surprise he tried to mask was not uncommon in the department, and not unnoticed by the quiet secretary by the door. Lila Desroses told him kindly, “You may find it quite annoying that they bicker every day, like Lukas does, but I think it’s just their way to stay sane in this hectic job.” Kieran turned to face her, an eyebrow raised, and she adds, “Well, at least, personally, I find the sight endearing. A reminder that things aren’t all Phantom Scythe and murder.” The secretary turned to face the bickering pair (and in the line of sight, a distressed Lauren Sinclair and disgruntled Lukas Randall), and Kieran did the same. Heeding her words, he drank in the bouts of vividity in their actions. Already he knew what he was going to draw later, back in his apartment, in lieu of a sleepless night. Again, his fingers began to itch for the touch of the familiar wooden pencil in his pocket.

Lila Desroses brought him back to reality. “I’ve collected the finished paperwork for you, excluding the tall pile on Sarge’s desk, which she claims is finished.” She laid her hand on the pile of reports with a cute smile, eyes in dark crescents behind her round glasses. Kieran smiled back at her, collecting the pile under her hand and placing it on the trolley, before pushing it over to the Sergeant’s desk. Immediately Kym Ladell turned to him, eyes sparkling wide, eyelashes batting at him. “Oh, are you here to collect my paperwork?”

To his slight surprise, her hand slammed the taller pile of the two, which he’d initially assumed was the unfinished paperwork. “Here’s the ones I’ve finished. And hey, Kieran, if you have anything else you need me to do, don’t ever hesitate to inform me.” He had to stop himself from smirking upon hearing the exasperated sighs of her fellow friends. He picked the pile up and plopped it at the trolley, giving her a salute. “Anything for you, Ms. Ladell,” he assured her, and with a final moment of pause to capture the image of her faux-infatuation on him in his head, he headed for the door, and into the archives, trolley in hand.

The gods gave him images that day; plenty of images to draw, to encapsulate, in the midst of the chaos, the thunderstorms between his job as the assassin Purple Hyacinth, as the vigilante Lune, as the archivist Kieran White—all who were him, and yet none of them truly himself. Perhaps this was meant to be a reward, an act of salvation, returning a piece of the humanity he’d lost long ago. Maybe the gods heard his plea, when Lauren Sinclair—hypocritical as she was—called him a monster, and he lashed out at her, all but admitting the true nature of himself, and took pity on him.

Or maybe yet, as he realized when he sunk back into his desk in the archives, the huge pile of reports to read, only to report back to the Phantom Scythe, _this_ was meant to be the punishment. Maybe it wasn’t the mundane act of reading reports, the awkward tension between him and Lauren Sinclair, or the acting at all. After all, it wasn’t hard to pretend to be a normal, hard working citizen; though he was anything but, he’d dreamt of it so long, he knew what he’d do if he were living a relatively normal life. Though he hated paperwork, he’d probably work in an office; a private investigator, maybe. After all, he’d spent his life in the Phantom Scythe working a way through the system, trying to get to the leader and undo his meticulous plans. He wouldn’t want to be an artist. He always could, he thought, but drawing was more of his hobby, a getaway, rather than a means to make a living.

But maybe the punishment was this: a mere reminder, rather than a price—after all, he knew he hadn’t exactly done some _specific_ thing this time to be punished for—a reminder from the gods, either a warning in the interest of the world, or a word of wisdom in his own interest. Maybe they wanted Kieran, for a change, to see things not from his own eyes, but rather the people around him. They did literally put him in the shoes of Harvey Wood, who worked hard as a spy for the sake of his family, because they had nothing to live by. Maybe they wanted him to see how normal people live their lives, how normal people were desperately affected by the stunts of the Phantom Scythe, all while making Kieran himself painfully aware that _he_ was one of the main reasons the people were suffering. He was forced to play spectator, watching as the APD turned in circles trying to do their jobs, and getting wrecked by the outcome, while he proceeded to use the results of their hard work instead to continue supporting their common enemy. Maybe, rather than a reminder of someone he used to be, the gods were reminding him of the monster he’d become, the monster that harmed everyone, the way he did Lauren Sinclair that cold, rainy night.

Maybe it was simply up to him to decipher what the gods meant. Maybe the gods didn’t even _mean_ anything, just throwing whatever they had on him because that’s what they do best: mock humanity, and the wreck they cause themselves.

Even though he had implanted in his mind the images of the officers—the patient lieutenant, the sergeant fond of him, the always-sulky grumpy cat, and the kind as ever secretary, the first thing Kieran White drew that night was the girl who didn’t raise her head for a single moment from her desk. The girl blazing red, who he knew still harboured many choice feelings for him, none of them pleasant ones, every one of them the way people always reacted to him: in anger, in fear, but amplified. The picture was from a few days back, where he had caught a glimpse of the officer in patrol, along with her the sergeant and the lieutenant, smiling fondly at her friend who had an affinity for watermelons and the exasperated man beside her. Even though it was a cloudy day, the skies gray, her eyes glimmered bright yellow in the presence of the people she cared about. It stuck in his mind, the image of joy he hadn’t seen in almost a decade. He found himself drawing the image in blurs of time, with little help from the moonlight, the golden of his desk lamp, and the faint sound of flowing water down by the river. 

When he was nearly finished he took a look at the paper, before his eyes drifted to his graphite-stained calloused hands. Did he even deserve to draw Lauren Sinclair? He thought to himself, seeing his hands slightly tremble at the reminder of what he’d done to her. He’d never let himself forget it, not that he could to begin with. He began to see blood on his hands, the blood of the people he killed in the prison tower, all the people from ground up to the fifteenth floor, covering the graphite on his pale skin. He fisted his hand as a jerk response, before placing his hand back on the paper, landing over the face he’d drawn. And yet in contrast to the white paper, his hand looked too much like blood, the color of Lauren Sinclair’s hair, and he wondered—for a split second—whether one day he’d have to have her blood on his hands. After all, he’d been tasked to find and kill Lune.

 _No._ He was not going to let the gods have this one. If they want him to do that—even if he still desires to win by playing the rules of the Phantom Scythe—he’ll do it the right way. Lune, despite being broken, was still composed of two: Lauren Sinclair, and Kieran White himself. So if Lauren had to die, so would he, and he was sure about that. He made it his own vow. After all he’d done to Lauren, all she risked for their alliance, the very trust he’d shattered, it was only right that he risked so much. He had nothing left, other than his safety, so that he’d risk. And he knew that if he ever gets exposed, even before he could be sent to jail, people would come for him. For _them_ . The very least he could do for her was offer his protection; his life before hers. He would make sure of the fact that no one gets to Lauren before they get to _him._ And he knew that won’t be an easy feat. He was the Purple Hyacinth, after all.

The dim moon was covered by thick clouds, casting shadows in the room. The stains in his hand faded back to black, the face of Lauren Sinclair in the paper a lot darker than he’d shaded it—but he swore he could see that yellow glint of determination, of _life_ , like diamond in her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> hiiiiiiiiiii hello hi hello
> 
> i've been reading fics in AO3 for a while now (read: three years) but this is my first ever fic!
> 
> ig i've decided to post it because PH updates are slow asf and i massively thank the PH fandom in AO3 for sustaining my love for it all this time so here ya go; it's only right that i dedicate my first fic for PH <3
> 
> thanks for reading (and sorry for such a standard fic i am not an established fic writer :"))
> 
> (p.s. it's not that important but—i added that "like diamond" at the last line very last minute because i suddenly thought of how graphite and diamond are like, the same things in different temperature/pressure — basically circumstances. idk i was just proud of it :D)


End file.
